France to Pay Greenpeace $8.16 Million

LONDON — The environmental organization Greenpeace said Friday that an arbitration tribunal ordered France to pay it $8.16 million in damages for the sinking of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior two years ago.

Greenpeace chairman David McTaggart said the organization will use the award, made Friday by a three-member international tribunal in Geneva, to support its worldwide fleet and its campaigns for a nuclear-free Pacific.

The French government had no immediate comment on the award.

The Rainbow Warrior was sunk July 10, 1985, by French secret agents in the harbor at Auckland, New Zealand, as it was preparing to lead a small fleet of protest vessels to Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia to protest French nuclear testing there.

Fernando Pereira, a photographer on the vessel, drowned. France earlier paid an undisclosed settlement to his family.